Wassup Rocker Radio Mixtape #18

Starting off this week’s video mixtape is Lovely Bad Things from L.A. Up next is Milwaukee garage rockers The Pukes , up next we focus on punk rockers Amyl and the Sniffers from Australia. We end this week’s mixtape with a power pop hit by White Reaper called Judy French! Enjoy the newest, best videos I could find for you this week! SHARE it if you enjoyed it!

If you are or have ever been a directionless 20-something teetering on the cusp of an existential crisis, Teenage Grownups– the infectious first single off the new Lovely Bad Things album of the same name– is your next new escape from crushing reality. The song encapsulates the universal feeling of not knowing which way is up when you’re trying to find yourself, all wrapped up nicely in a hook-driven, power pop package. Like a high school crush you never quite got over, Teenage Grownups pulls at your heartstrings by mixing sentimental sincerity with a rush of playful nostalgia. Expect instrumental nods to bands like Pavement and Dinosaur Jr., placed alongside vocal arrangements and melodies that are uniquely Lovely Bad Things.

Milwaukee punks The Pukes play catchy as hell 50s inspired punk rock in a similar bucket as Hunx and His Punx but a little more rockin’, like the snotty offspring of Eddie Cochran and Glen Danzig (not sure how that happens but whatever). They’ve only been around since 2015 – releasing a single and an EP and now their debut “The Revenge of The Pukes” – 10 or so cuts of frantic doo-wop garage boogie rock and roll.

Amyl and the Sniffers are punky, mid-70s glam revival goodness from Melbourne. Every track is an easy-sleazy headbopper, but opener I’m Not A Loser is the clear winner here, like a teenage Sex Pistols with the brattiest kid sister imaginable on vox. Perfectly snotty stuff, it almost demands you break every window in your high school.

White Reaper are from Louisville, KY—where the Muhammad Ali Center stands as a tribute to its native son who backed up the greatest anthology of shit talk ever heard. It’d be enough to have the sense of humor to call their album The World’s Best American Band. Even better if they have the heart to actually mean it. But White Reaper have the chops and the guts to make their hometown hero proud: bragging is when a person says something and can’t do it and White Reaper do what they say. In White Reaper’s world, being coy about influence means you have something to hide and they proudly flaunt theirs like denim patches—-Ramones of course, but also Cheap Trick, Kiss, Thin Lizzy Van Halen, rock bands who essentially functioned as pop. The opening title track poses *The World’s Best American Band *as both a concept record and self-fulfilling prophecy, piping in the kind of crowd noise that can only be generated in arenas far bigger than White Reaper may ever see in this lifetime.